Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication and repetitive behaviors, and occurs in 1 out of 68 children in the United States.
A well-known characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is decreased eye contact. Behavioral studies have found that ASD individuals have impairments in face recognition and discrimination6-8 Eye tracking techniques have been used to examine how ASD individuals scan faces. Overall, existing studies have consistently found that ASD children and adults show reduced visual attention to faces compared to their typically developing (TD) counterparts. More specifically, Yi et al., found that ASD children's scanning differed significantly from that of the TD group only in the area of the eyes. The authors concluded that the face scanning abnormality in ASD children is limited only to the eye region, likely due to their strong tendency to avoid eye contact.
These eye contact abnormalities have been implicated as one factor interfering with social interaction for young children with ASD. In early development, eye contact serves to regulate face-to-face social interactionsll and contribute communicatively to social interactions. Later, eye contact responses coordinate the visual attention between another individual and an object of interest and have been found to be an influencing variable in language acquisition. It has also been suggestive that poor eye contact may adversely affect educational gain due to the relationship between eye contact and attending to the teacher.
Given the high prevalence of autism and the negative consequences of poor eye contact, a number of treatment options have been proposed including behavioral, pharmacological, and technological treatment options. Perhaps the most widely used and researched approach is referred to as applied behavioral analysis. Since the early 1960's applied behavior analysis (ABA) has been used by therapists to teach communication and social behavior to children with autism. We hypothesize that the combination of the contact lenses and ABA treatment will be more effective because the contact lens will be customized to the child's interest.